Dell vSAN Ready Nodes with Dell ObjectScale to Run Your Modern Applications
Thu, 07 Jul 2022 14:52:56 -0000
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In my previous blogs, the focus has been on highlighting the value that Dell vSAN Ready Nodes incorporate in a standardized market segment. These value additions include the variety of form factors available, the existence of 13 models with Identity modules, and the special benefits that the integration with Open Manage Enterprise provides.
But, what about the workloads? One key factor to decide for an infrastructure choice is the benefits and advantages it may have for the type of workloads the business requires. Today, the ability to run effectively and incorporate enterprise features such as protection or replication determine the choice of platform that customers make.
In a world where cloud native applications (CNA) are the natural choice for new deployments, it is relevant to describe how Dell vSAN Ready Nodes behave is such scenarios.
Speaking about paradigms, CNA is to application development like unstructured data is to storage. The relevance of object storage, and the growth that it experiments every year, is substantial.
Wouldn’t it be great to put all these together under the Dell vSAN Ready Node hood?
There is a great VMware platform to simplify your DevOps experience by adding Kubernetes to your infrastructure, making it ready to run modern applications and minimize operational complexity. VMware Tanzu provides a self-service, consistent Kubernetes experience for developers to maximize their productivity, and security and data protection policies and features, out-of-the-box.
vSphere with Tanzu supervisor cluster architecture
A cluster that is enabled for vSphere with Tanzu is called a Supervisor Cluster. It runs on top of an SDDC layer that consists of ESXi for compute, NSX-T Data Center or vSphere networking, and vSAN, like in a Dell vSAN Ready Node. vSAN shared storage is used for persistent volumes for vSphere Pods, VMs running inside the Supervisor Cluster, and pods in a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster.
Dell ObjectScale, based on the Dell ECS platform, delivers a new, software-defined, microservices-based architecture using Kubernetes to provide enterprise-class object storage for modern, cloud-native applications in VMware environments.
Dell ObjectScale deployment option for VMware environments (Dell vSAN Ready Nodes)
Dell ObjectScale integration with VMware vSphere with Tanzu and the vSAN Data Persistence platform enable supporting cloud-native applications on Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. It also enables a global management platform for the distributed storage infrastructure under a single namespace with universal content access.
The components for the solution are:
- VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu
- NSX-T
- vSAN (in this example, Dell PowerEdge R650 vSAN Ready Nodes)
- vSAN Data Persistence platform
The solution is built upon four Dell PowerEdge R650 vSAN Ready Nodes configured in a vSAN cluster. This includes three VMware NSX-T manager nodes and three edge nodes for redundancy and high-availability. VMware NSX-T manager nodes were installed on the same vSAN cluster to conserve resources in a lab environment. In a production environment, NSX-T manager nodes can also be installed on an external cluster to provide management and data-plane separation and availability.
This architecture integrates Dell ObjectScale with VMware vSphere with Tanzu through vSAN Data Persistence platform enabling customers to deploy software-defined object storage (stateful services). It also makes containers as easy to manage as VMs. IT departments can deploy cloud-native web and mobile applications, dev/test environments, and AI/ML and analytics platforms over the same infrastructure that host their legacy VMs.
There are different deployment options available:
- Fully sharing the vSAN Ready Nodes clusters between ObjectScale data services and the workloads to be run
- Creating separate clusters in the vSAN Ready Node farm for ObjectScale data service and the workloads to be run
If you want to learn more about how Dell vSAN Ready Nodes can be built to host cloud-native workloads, see the VMware white paper Dell ObjectScale on VMware vSphere with Tanzu.
References
- White paper: Dell ObjectScale on VMware vSphere with Tanzu
- Dell ObjectScale
- Dell vSAN Ready Nodes Info Hub
- Blog: Running Dell ObjectScale on VMware vSphere with Tanzu
Author: Inigo Olcoz, Twitter: @virtualOlcoz
Related Blog Posts
Dell ObjectScale on VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu
Mon, 27 Jun 2022 21:50:51 -0000
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Dell Technologies has engineered software-defined, enterprise-class, high performance, containerized architecture object storage in the VMware Tanzu platform called ObjectScale.
Dell ObjectScale
VMware and Dell Technologies have worked together to provide a framework for cloud-native object storage in vSphere, using the vSAN Data Persistence platform: Dell ObjectScale on VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu. Dell ObjectScale provides native Kubernetes, S3-compatible storage utilizing vSAN. ObjectScale integrates with vSphere, simplifying management for administrators. With rich S3 compatibility and self-service APIs, you can quickly spin up object storage containers to fuel applications, ranging from big data and analytics to ephemeral dev or test sandboxes.
Dell ObjectScale allows organizations to deliver scalable cloud services with the reliability and control of private cloud infrastructure like VMware. ObjectScale enables you easily to manage globally distributed storage infrastructure under a single object store with anywhere access to content.
ObjectScale is built with specific design principles:
- Global namespace with eventual consistency
- Scale-out capabilities
- Secure multi-tenancy
- Superior performance for both small and large objects
The platform was built as a distributed system, following the microservices principle of cloud applications. ObjectScale has a layered architecture, in which each function in the system is built as an independent layer, making them horizontally scalable across all nodes and enabling high availability.
Deploy ObjectScale using the individual VMware software components:
- VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu
- NSX-T
- vSAN
- vSAN Data Persistence platform （optional）
VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu
VCF with Tanzu provides numerous options for running a Kubernetes environment. K8s allows organizations to develop and innovate applications quickly, but the storage infrastructure needs to be just as agile. When using modern stateful services, in conjunction with a shared nothing architecture that deploys built-in services such as replication and encryption, traditional storage consumption may need to change.
vSAN Data Persistence platform
vSAN DPp provides a framework for our service partners to integrate with the VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure. vSAN DPp allows organizations to run stateful services that can quickly scale while simplifying operations and reducing costs. This allows you to deploy stateful services, in parallel with traditional applications, using the same infrastructure, with vCenter as a common management interface.
To learn more about running modern applications in your data center, here are some additional resources.
Resources:
- See the Solution Overview for details, including features and benefits
- Obtain deployment guidance from the new VMware technical white paper: Dell ObjectScale on vSphere with Tanzu: Running modern applications in the traditional datacenter
- See Dell’s technical blog for insights on deploying the solution with Dell VxRail, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) built with and for VMware. Running Dell ObjectScale on VMware vSphere with Tanzu
- VMware: Modern Stateful Services
- ObjectScale Installation Guide for VMware vSphere
- ObjectScale Overview and Architecture
- ObjectScale Administrator Guide
- Visit the Dell ObjectScale website for additional ObjectScale resources.
Author: Jarvis Zhu
Identity Modules role in Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes
Fri, 19 Nov 2021 18:03:54 -0000
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When we think about vSAN Ready Nodes from a Dell Technologies perspective, we provide a wide portfolio of platforms to choose from, both in terms of form factors and technical specifications. We can also offer ease of operations and life cycle management, which are made possible by the graceful integration of Dell EMC Open Manage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) with VMware’s vSphere lifecycle management (vLCM).
But…is there anything else?
The answer is yes! Behind the scenes is a simple technology that enables the Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes platform to reach advanced levels of automation.
Let me introduce the Dell EMC Identity Module.
Our first contact with this interesting subject comes when we first connect to the underlying PowerEdge iDRAC interface. As shown in the following image, the iDRAC has spotted something.
Is there anything different in this Dell EMC R740XD vSAN Ready Node than what we could observe if instead we were seeing a standard PowerEdge R740XD? Indeed. That brief description of the R740XD vSAN Ready Node makes the difference. We’ll get to that very soon.
As you may know, vCenter is the main management console for a VMware platform such as vSAN Ready Nodes. From vCenter, we can see a very similar description of our Ready Node:
What if we were just seeing a PowerEdge server, such as a PowerEdge MX740C?
No mention of Ready Node here, just a vanilla description of the server model. So, what’s the deal about that unique chassis identification provided by the Identity Module?
That particular text string enables any programmatic interface to locate and direct an operation to that specific set of infrastructure assets. A select type primitive from an automation platform may be able to pinpoint a Dell EMC vSAN Ready Node from other servers because it has an Identity Module. This means that if we have a 100-node server farm, in which 16 are, for example, Dell EMC R740XD vSAN Ready Nodes, and the rest are other server types without an Identity Module, we can easily direct any operation coming from an automation framework such as vRealize Orchestrator, Ansible, or Puppet to our Ready Nodes, and it will respond positively to any query that is looking for a vSAN Ready Node text string.
The Identity Module, as a unique chassis identification method, allows any programmatic operation to distinguish the ready node farm from the rest of the servers in the datacenter—a simple feature that enables such powerful automation. On top of this, from a support perspective, the Identity Module enables Dell teams to more rapidly triage and diagnose any system anomaly. This feature helps the more than 1.800 VMware certified Dell support engineers solve above 90% of the cases in-house, avoiding the need to route level 3 tickets to VMware.
Consider it another technology tidbit that helps differentiate Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes from other similar offerings.
To read more about Identity Modules driven automation, check out this blog (Tony’ blog on IDMod automation, when available).
For more technical information on Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes, check here.
Author Information
Inigo Olcoz, Senior Principal Engineering Technologist at Dell Technologies
Twitter: @VirtualOlcoz